Read Your Emails Quotes

I love all the girls who have my song on their myspaces. I love the people who come to my shows and put the pictures on here. I love the people at those shows who sing along with me. I love reading your stories in emails, some so touching they've given me chills. I love every single person who has wanted my autograph, because for the life of me I never really thought it would mean something to someone for me to write my name down. I love the little girls who stand in line with their mothers like I used to do. That was me. I love the couple who danced to my song at their wedding. Every comment, letter, and message. I love people who listen to the radio. I love every single person who is reading this, because you've let me into your life. I love you all so much, I just wanted you to know.

At your next book club meeting, picture me sitting quietly in the corner, taking notes on your preferences. Imagine the next day you get an email from me trying to sell you a new grill — or a book — or accessories for your Glock. That's the Amazon/Goodreads deal. It's appalling. But everywhere in the press, you'll read about the genius of Amazon." (Michael Herrmann and the booksellers of Gibson's)

Take Time Out. It's not a real vacation if you're reading email or calling in for messages.

Why don’t you want to see your mom? Did she burn your dolls in a sacrificial fire? Read your e-mail?” “She wants to run my life,” I explain. “What a bitch. It’s like she thinks she’s your mother or something.” “She’s a psychopath,” I said. “It’s complicated.” “Psychopaths can’t afford fur coats.” “This one can.

..reading your ex's horoscope every week isn't going to help you control his life. No, you need to hide in his bushes, break into his email, or kidnap his dog if you want to effect any real change.

Lidewij, I believe Agustus Waters sent a few pages from a notebok to Peter Van Houten shortly before he (Augustus) died. It is very important to me that someone reads these pages. I want to read them, of course, but maybe they weren't written for me. Regardless, they must be read. They must be. Can you help? Your friend, Hazel Grace Lancaster "She responded late that afternoon." Dear Hazel, I did not know that Augustus had died. I am very sad to hear this news. He was such a very charismatic young man. I am so sorry, and so sad. I have not spoken to Peter since I resigned that day we met. It is very late at night here, but I am going over to his house first thing in the morning to find this letter and force him to read it. Mornings were his best time, usually. Your friend, Lidewij Vliegenthart p.s. I am bringing my boyfriend in case we have to physically retsrain Peter.

Oh Beck, I love reading your e-mail. Learning your life. And I am careful; I always mark new messages unread so that you won't get alarmed. My good fortune doesn't stop there; You prefer e-mail. You don't like texting. So this means that I am not missing out on all that much communication. You wrote an "essay" for some blog in which you stated that "e-mails last forever. You can search for any word at any time and see everything you ever said to anyone about that one word. Texts go away." I love you for wanting a record. I love your records for being so accessible and I'm so full of you, your calendar of caloric intake and hookups and menstrual moments, your self-portraits you don't publish, your recipes and exercises. You will know me soon too, I promise.

Dear Mr. Peter Van Houten (c/o Lidewij Vliegenthart), My name is Hazel Grace Lancaster. My friend Augustus Waters, who read An Imperial Affliction at my recommendationtion, just received an email from you at this address. I hope you will not mind that Augustus shared that email with me. Mr. Van Houten, I understand from your email to Augustus that you are not planning to publish any more books. In a way, I am disappointed, but I'm also relieved: I never have to worry whether your next book will live up to the magnificent perfection of the original. As a three-year survivor of Stage IV cancer, I can tell you that you got everything right in An Imperial Affliction. Or at least you got me right. Your book has a way of telling me what I'm feeling before I even feel it, and I've reread it dozens of times. I wonder, though, if you would mind answering a couple questions I have about what happens after the end of the novel. I understand the book ends because Anna dies or becomes too ill to continue writing it, but I would really like to mom-wether she married the Dutch Tulip Man, whether she ever has another child, and whether she stays at 917 W. Temple etc. Also, is the Dutch Tulip Man a fraud or does he really love them? What happens to Anna's friends-particularly Claire and Jake? Do they stay that this is the kind of deep and thoughtful question you always hoped your readers would ask-what becomes of Sisyphus the Hamster? These questions have haunted me for years-and I don't know long I have left to get answers to them. I know these are not important literary questions and that your book is full of important literally questions, but I would just really like to know. And of course, if you ever do decide to write anything else, even if you don't want to publish it. I'd love to read it. Frankly, I'd read your grocery lists. Yours with great admiration, Hazel Grace Lancaster (age 16)

He watches me eat for a moment. “Let me see it again.” “No.” “Okay.” He pulls a can of carbonated water out of his backpack and pops the lid. Sometimes I want to punch him. I find the letter and slide it across the table. He reads it again. It makes me feel all jittery inside. His eyes flick up. “She likes you.” I shrug and steal his drink. It tastes like someone drowned an orange in a bottle of Perrier, and I cough. Rev smiles. “You like her.” “How can you drink this crap?” His smile widens. “Is it making you crazy that she won’t reveal herself?” “Seriously, Rev, do you have any regular water?” He’s no fool. “What do you want to do?” I take a long breath and blow it out. I run a hand through my hair. “I don’t know.” “You know.” “I want to stake out the grave. This waiting between letters is killing me.” “Suggest email.” “She doesn’t want to tell me anything more than her age. She’s not going to give me her email address.” “Maybe not her real email. But you could set up a private account and give her the address. See if she writes you.” It’s so simple it’s brilliant. I hate that I didn’t think of it. “Rev, I could kiss you.” “Brush your teeth first.” He reclaims his bizarre can of water.

If you’re like me, you have far too many things you want to do, read, see, test, and experience. Your inbox is a treasure trove of possibilities. To a creative mind, that’s very enticing. It’s easy for an optimist to keep fifty, a hundred, or even a thousand e-mails hovering in their inbox in the hopes that, someday soon, they’ll get a chance to give each opportunity the precious time that it deserves. But guess what? That’s never gonna happen.

A 15-minute gap in your day is plenty of time to write and read, but not if you check your email first.

Does it help?” he asks. “The e-mailing.” She nods. “A tiny bit. It’s strange. You’re writing a letter to someone who’s never going to read it, so it kind of frees you up a bit.

We had these throwbacks who would do stuff like printing their emails out on paper to read them, or asking you for your goddamn fax number two decades after you had thrown away your fax machine.

On the topic of exercise, "It's just as important as brushing your teeth everyday, more important than watching TV or reading online or answering email. Make time for something so crucial to a good life.

Nobody's going to level you up. If you want that next level, take it. Take it for yourself. Grab it. Become it. Claim it. Write a treatise. Create an event. Champion a cause. Build something great. Speak your mind. Make the call. Build the business. Author the book. Send the email. Do it. Do it. If you fail, big deal. You might write something and nobody might read it. You might build it and nobody might come. You could fail and ruin your life. You could take a chance and end up looking really, really stupid. Boo-fucking-hoo. It doesn't matter.

Did you know that Jacques Benveniste, one of the world's leading homeopathic "scientists," now claims that you can *email* homeopathic remedies? Yeah, see, what you do is you can take the "memory" of the diluted substance out of the water electromagnetically, put it on your computer, email it, and play it back on a sound card into new water. I mean, that could work, right? (Nick's thoughts after reading Francis Wheen's book "How Mumbo-Jumbo Conquered the World")

You know what I think?” Touching him feels so good, so strangely uncomplicated, like he’s the exception to every rule. “What?” “I think you love your job,” he says softly. “I think you work that hard because you care ten times more than the average person.” “About work,” I say. “About everything.” His arms tighten around me. “Your sister. Your clients. Their books. You don’t do anything you’re not going to do one hundred percent. You don’t start anything you can’t finish. “You’re not the person who buys the stationary bike as part of a New Year’s resolution, then uses it as a coatrack for three years. You’re not the kind of woman who only works hard when it feels good, or only shows up when it’s convenient. If someone insults one of your clients, those fancy kid gloves of yours come off, and you carry your own pen at all times, because if you’re going to have to write anything, it might as well look good. You read the last page of books first—don’t make that face, Stephens.” He cracks a smile in one corner of his mouth. “I’ve seen you—even when you’re shelving, you sometimes check the last page, like you’re constantly looking for all the information, trying to make the absolute best decisions.” “And by you’ve seen me,” I say, “you mean you’ve watched me.” “Of course I fucking do,” he says in a low, rough voice. “I can’t stop. I’m always aware of where you are, even if I don’t look, but it’s impossible not to. I want to see your face get stern when you’re emailing a client’s editor, being a hard-ass, and I want to see your legs when you’re so excited about something you just read that you can’t stop crossing and uncrossing them. And when someone pisses you off, you get these red splotches.” His fingers brush my throat. “Right here.” “You’re a fighter,” he says. “When you care about something, you won’t let anything fucking touch it. I’ve never met anyone who cares as much as you do. Do you know what most people would give to have someone like that in their life?” His eyes are dark, probing, his heartbeat fast. “Do you know how fucking lucky anyone you care about is? You know . . .

If you had to listen to a lawyer read the email or text out loud in a courtroom, would you change the tone? When I was a teenager, my mom used to tell me not to put anything in writing that I would feel uncomfortable seeing published on the front page of the New York Times. I understood, even then, what she was suggesting: Engage only in behavior that you’re prepared to stand by and defend. Be on your toes to be your best self at all times, even when no one is watching.

I was commissioned to write copy for an annual publication produced by Top Tourist Parks of Australia. After a print run of seventy-five thousand and distribution throughout Australia and New Zealand, it was discovered that I had left the letter v out of the word 'dive' and the introduction for a family beach resort activity read, "Die with your children. A new world awaits.

I hope this email finds you well I hope this email finds you calm. I hope this email finds you unflustered about your inbox. I hope this email finds you in a state of acceptance that this email isn’t exactly important in the cosmic scheme of things. I hope this email finds your work happily unfinished. I hope this email finds you beneath a beautiful sky with the wind tenderly caressing your hair like an invisible mother. I hope this email finds you lying on a beach, or maybe beside a lake. I hope this email finds you with the sunlight on your face. I hope this email finds you eating some blissfully sweet grapes. I hope this email finds you well but, you know what, it is okay if it doesn’t because we all have bad days. I hope this email finds you reading a really good poem or something else that requires no direct response from you. I hope this email finds you far away from this email.

Have you read my emails before?" I ask. I try to keep my voice casual but I can hear the anxiety in it. The What the f*ck in it. When you're a stupid girl in love, it's almost impossible to see the red flags. It's so easy to pretend they're not there, to pretend that everything is perfect.

I think reading those emails affected you this way because you might be envious. Maybe you crave a connection, a love like my parents have, like our parents had together, maybe something more than the relationship you’ve idolized your whole life.” He leans in, his every word striking like a blow.

Keep laser-focused on school, and I'll see YOU at Christmas. Josh leans his lanky body over my shoulder and peers at my laptop. "Is it just me,or is that 'YOU' sort of threatening?" "No.It's not just YOU," I say. "I thought your dad was a writer.What's with the 'laser-focused''gentle reminder' shit?" "My father is fluent in cliche. Obviously, you've never read one of his novels." I pause. "I can't believe he has the nerve to say he'll give Seany my best." Josh shakes his head in disgust. My friends and I are spending the weekend in the lounge because it's raining again. No one ever mentions this, but it turns out Paris is as drizzly as London. According to St. Clair,that is, our only absent member. He went to some photography show at Ellie's school. Actually,he was supposed to be back by now. He's running late.As usual. Mer and Rashmi are curled up on one of the lobby couches,reading our latest English assignment, Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress. I turn back to my father's email. Gentle reminder... your life sucks.

If you are conducting a one-hour meeting at your company, you have effectively stolen one hour from every person in the room. If there are twenty people in the room, your presentation is now the equivalent of a twenty-hour investment. It is therefore your responsibility to ensure that you do not waste the hour by reading from PowerPoint slides, providing information that could have been delivered via email, lecturing, pontificating, pandering, or otherwise boring your audience. You must entertain, engage, and inform. Every single time.

I had started on the marriage and motherhood beat by accident with a post on my personal, read only by friends, blog called ‘Fifty Shades of Men’. I had written it after buying Fifty Shades of Grey to spice up what Dave and I half-jokingly called our grown up time, and had written a meditation on how the sex wasn’t the sexiest part of the book. “Dear publishers, I will tell you why every woman with a ring on her finger and a car seat in her SUV is devouring this book like the candy she won’t let herself eat.” I had written. “It’s not the fantasy of an impossibly handsome guy who can give you an orgasm just by stroking your nipples. It is instead the fantasy of a guy who can give you everything. Hapless, clueless, barely able to remain upright without assistance, Ana Steele is that unlikeliest of creatures, a college student who doesn’t have an email address, a computer, or a clue. Turns out she doesn’t need any of those things. Here is the dominant Christian Grey and he’ll give her that computer plus an iPad, a beamer, a job, and an identity, sexual and otherwise. No more worrying about what to wear. Christian buys her clothes. No more stress about how to be in the bedroom. Christian makes those decisions. For women who do too much—which includes, dear publishers, pretty much all the women who have enough disposable income to buy your books—this is the ultimate fantasy: not a man who will make you come, but a man who will make agency unnecessary, a man who will choose your adventure for you.

It feels powerful to him to put an experience down in words, like he's trapping it in a jar and it can never fully leave him. He told Marianne once that he'd been writing stories, and now she keeps asking to read them. If they're as good as your emails they must be superb, she wrote. That was a nice thing to read, though he responded honestly: They're not as good as my emails.

The most difficult stories about the Khmer Rouge are the ones over which hover almost and maybe. She almost made it, but dysentery took her at the end. He is maybe buried in the mass grave at Choeung Ek, so we will pay our respects there. He almost walked all the way to Thailand, but the cadres found him in the forest. She maybe saw her infant son one last time before she was taken. Anne Spencer almost made it off those wards. After I read the email, an ancient and exuberant terror blazed through me. It was partly the terror that had grown in me alongside my very bones, knowing as I did that I only existed because my mother had outrun almost; I don’t know at what point you stop feeling the need to run, generation by generation, when you’re born after that. But it was also a wonderful, simple, human terror. The one where death brushes too close to you and you abruptly remember what an insane gift it is to be alive, and how much you’d like to stay alive even when death is laughing at your window, laughing in your mirror.

The harder the push, the greater the Rebel push-back. I laughed when a Rebel friend told me, 'No one can tell me to do anything. I recently got an email saying "Please read" in the subject line, and I immediately deleted it.

For now, the Simple Daily Practice means doing ONE thing every day. Try any one of these things each day: A) Sleep eight hours. B) Eat two meals instead of three. C) No TV. D) No junk food. E) No complaining for one whole day. F) No gossip. G) Return an e-mail from five years ago. H) Express thanks to a friend. I) Watch a funny movie or a stand-up comic. J) Write down a list of ideas. The ideas can be about anything. K) Read a spiritual text. Any one that is inspirational to you. The Bible, The Tao te Ching, anything you want. L) Say to yourself when you wake up, “I’m going to save a life today.” Keep an eye out for that life you can save. M) Take up a hobby. Don’t say you don’t have time. Learn the piano. Take chess lessons. Do stand-up comedy. Write a novel. Do something that takes you out of your current rhythm. N) Write down your entire schedule. The schedule you do every day. Cross out one item and don’t do that anymore. O) Surprise someone. P) Think of ten people you are grateful for. Q) Forgive someone. You don’t have to tell them. Just write it down on a piece of paper and burn the paper. It turns out this has the same effect in terms of releasing oxytocin in the brain as actually forgiving them in person. R) Take the stairs instead of the elevator. S) I’m going to steal this next one from the 1970s pop psychology book Don’t Say Yes When You Want to Say No: when you find yourself thinking of that special someone who is causing you grief, think very quietly, “No.” If you think of him and (or?) her again, think loudly, “No!” Again? Whisper, “No!” Again, say it. Louder. Yell it. Louder. And so on. T) Tell someone every day that you love them. U) Don’t have sex with someone you don’t love. V) Shower. Scrub. Clean the toxins off your body. W) Read a chapter in a biography about someone who is an inspiration to you. X) Make plans to spend time with a friend. Y) If you think, “Everything would be better off if I were dead,” then think, “That’s really cool. Now I can do anything I want and I can postpone this thought for a while, maybe even a few months.” Because what does it matter now? The planet might not even be around in a few months. Who knows what could happen with all these solar flares. You know the ones I’m talking about. Z) Deep breathing. When the vagus nerve is inflamed, your breathing becomes shallower. Your breath becomes quick. It’s fight-or-flight time! You are panicking. Stop it! Breathe deep. Let me tell you something: most people think “yoga” is all those exercises where people are standing upside down and doing weird things. In the Yoga Sutras, written in 300 B.C., there are 196 lines divided into four chapters. In all those lines, ONLY THREE OF THEM refer to physical exercise. It basically reads, “Be able to sit up straight.” That’s it. That’s the only reference in the Yoga Sutras to physical exercise. Claudia always tells me that yogis measure their lives in breaths, not years. Deep breathing is what keeps those breaths going.

Unlike musical notation, paint or clay, language is inside every one of us. For free. We are all proficient at it. We already have the palette, the paints and the instruments. We don’t have to go and buy any reserved materials. Poetry is made of the same stuff you are reading now, the same stuff you use to order pizza over the phone, the same stuff you yell at your parents and children, whisper in your lover’s ear and shove into an e-mail, text or birthday card. It is common to us all.

Create mode is when you’re imaginative, creative, and open to new ideas. Edit mode is when you are logical, regulated, and analytical. Most of us constantly switch back and forth between the two within a given piece of work, like when we write an email. You write a small part, read it, make edits, and then write some more. The major issue is that your editor brain gets in the way of your creator brain. It stops the flow, which can remove the potential of amazing thoughts that you didn’t even know exist in your head from ever coming out. You need these thoughts to surface during this experiment, but your editor brain can get in the way because it’s too focused on making everything right or perfect. Thinking puts your editor brain into the driver’s seat.

Modern life was so fleeting. You could spend all day reading blogs, jerking off, sending e-mails, watching reality television, playing video games, drinking beers. This era had made it so easy to do nothing with your life. To be awake but not living. Just like I was.

Perhaps you’re reading this book with your phone by your side, checking your email whenever your attention drifts, tapping text messages to a friend. You sit at the end of a long line of inventions that might never have existed but for people with disabilities: the keyboard on your phone, the telecommunications lines it connects with, the inner workings of email. In 1808, Pellegrino Turri built the first typewriter so that his blind lover, Countess Carolina Fantoni da Fivizzano, could write letters more legibly. In 1872, Alexander Graham Bell invented the telephone to support his work helping the deaf. And in 1972, Vint Cerf programmed the first email protocols for the nascent internet. He believed fervently in the power of electronic letters, because electronic messaging was the best way to communicate with his wife, who was deaf, while he was at work.

email, that ingenious twentieth-century invention whereby any random person on the planet can pester you, at any time they like, and at almost no cost to themselves, by means of a digital window that sits inches from your nose, or in your pocket, throughout your working day, and often on weekends, too. The “input” side of this arrangement—the number of emails that you could, in principle, receive—is essentially infinite. But the “output” side—the number of messages you’ll have time to read properly, reply to, or just make a considered decision to delete—is strictly finite.

And allow Google and Facebook to read all your emails, monitor all your chats and messages, and keep a record of all your Likes and clicks. If you do all that, then the great algorithms of the Internet-of-All-Things will tell you whom to marry, which career to pursue and whether to start a war.

The behaviour you’re describing—reading your emails, going through your Internet browser history—you describe all this as though it is commonplace, as though it is normal. It isn’t, Megan. It isn’t normal to invade someone’s privacy to that degree. It’s what is often seen as a form of emotional abuse.

I read daily, not so much for the benefit of my writing, but because I am addicted to it. There is nothing in the world for me that compares to being lost in a really good novel. That said, reading is an absolute must if you want to write. It is a trite enough thing to say, but very true nonetheless. I cannot understand aspiring writers who email me for advice and freely admit that they read very little. I have learned something from every writer I have ever read. Sometimes I have done so consciously, picking up something about how to frame a scene, or seeing a new possibility with regards to structure, or interesting ways to write dialogue. Other times, I think, my collective reading experience affects my sensibilities and informs me in ways that I am not quite aware of, but in real ways that impact how I approach writing. The short of it is, as an aspiring writer, there is nothing as damaging to your credibility as saying that you don’t like to read

Dear Jessa, I’ve started this letter so many times and I’ve never been able to finish it. So here goes again . . . I’m sorry. I’m sorry that Riley is dead. I’m sorry for ignoring your emails and for not being there for you. I’m sorry I’ve hurt you. There isn’t a day that goes by that I don’t wish it had been me that died and not Riley. If I could go back in time and change everything I would. I’m sorry I left without a word. There’s no excuse for my behaviour but please know that it had nothing to do with you. I was a mess. I haven’t been able to talk to anyone for months. And I felt too guilty and didn’t know how to tell you the truth about what happened. I couldn’t bear the thought of you knowing. I got all your emails but I didn’t read them until last week. I couldn’t face it and I guess that makes me the biggest coward you’ll ever meet. I’m sorry. I’m sorry I never replied. You needed me and I wasn’t there for you. I don’t even know how to ask your forgiveness because I don’t deserve it. I’m just glad you’re doing better. I’m better too. I’ve started seeing a therapist – twice a week – you’d like her. She reminds me of Didi. I never thought I’d be the kind of guy who needed therapy, but they made it a condition of me keeping my job. She’s helped me a lot with getting the panic attacks under control. Working in a room the size of a janitor’s closet helps too – there aren’t too many surprises, only the occasional rogue paperclip. I asked for the posting. I have to thank your dad ironically. The demotion worked out. Kind of funny that I totally get where your father was coming from all those years. Looks like I’ll be spending the remainder of my marine career behind a desk, but I’m OK with that. I don’t know what else to say, Jessa. My therapist says I should just write down whatever comes into my head. So here goes. Here’s what’s in my head . . . I miss you. I love you. Even though I long ago gave up the right to any sort of claim over you, I can’t stop loving you. I won’t ever stop. You’re in my blood. You’re the only thing that got me through this, Jessa. Because even during the bad times, the worst times, the times I’d wake up in a cold sweat, my heart thumping, the times I’d think the only way out was by killing myself and just having it all go away, I’d think of you and it would pull me back out of whatever dark place I’d fallen into. You’re my light, Jessa. My north star. You asked me once to come back to you and I told you I always would. I’m working on it. It might take me a little while, and I know I have no right to ask you to wait for me after everything I’ve done, but I’m going to anyway because the truth is I don’t know how to live without you. I’ve tried and I can’t do it. So please, I’m asking you to wait for me. I’m going to come back to you. I promise. And I’m going to make things right. I’ll do whatever it takes. I’ll never stop trying for the rest of my life to make things right between us. I love you. Always. Kit

You walk around the world and you see people multitasking. They’re playing games and they’re reading email and they’re on Facebook, etc … On a college campus, most kids are doing two things at once, maybe three things at once … Virtually all multitaskers think they are brilliant at multitasking. And one of the big discoveries is, You know what? You’re really lousy at it! It turns out multitaskers are terrible at every aspect of multitasking. They get distracted constantly. Their memory is very disorganized. Recent work we’ve done suggests they’re worse at analytical reasoning. We worry that it may be creating people who are unable to think well and clearly.15

There is nothing that you can do to win someone or something that is not meant to be yours. You can fight with everything you have. You can hold on for as long as you can. You can force yourself into mental gymnastics to pick apart signs. You can have your friends read into texts and emails. You can decide that you know what’s best for you and right for you. Mostly, you can wait. You can wait forever. What isn’t right for you will never remain in your life. There is no job, person, or city that you can force to be right for you if it is not, though you can pretend for a while. You can play games with yourself, you can justify and make ultimatums. You can say you’ll try just a little longer, and you can make excuses for why things aren’t working out right now. The truth is that what is right for you will come to you and stay with you and won’t stray from you for long. The truth is that when something is right for you, it brings you clarity, and when something is wrong for you, it brings you confusion. You get stuck when you try to make something that’s wrong for you right. When you try to force it into a place in your life in which it doesn’t belong. You get split; you breed this internal conflict which you cannot resolve. The more it intensifies, the more you mistake it for passion. How could you ever feel so strongly about something that isn’t right?

This book is destined to make waves no matter which ocean you throw it into. This is the first book Jarod's put together, mainly because he had such a hard time figuring out how to glue the pages to the spine. You'll laugh as you explore the mind of a madman as he emails seemingly random companies and institutions about bizarre things, and strange suggestions. With his surreal thoughts and ideas, Jarod paints a picture so vividly in the reader's mind that they'd think he was actually using their gray matter as a canvas. But don't worry, you can read this knowing that he will not spill paint on your favorite shirt. If laughing were a buffet, you'll eat so much with this book that you'll throw up. I recommend you read this book over a toilet.

You’re unhappy and you feel like a failure. PERFECT! Use that sad/angry/disappointed energy. Channel it into what you know, deep down in your heart, you love. Spend the next six months in a state of total obsession. Get up two hours earlier than usual and write before you go to work. Come home and exercise (not optional, sorry), then write for another hour. Read or watch the kind of comedy you love before bed. Don’t waste all your time socializing. Do a little socializing on weekends, but focus. Focus! Save your money. Research part-time work you could do for your company; use your slackness as a way to sell a new position where your boss would get your best from you every hour that you’re there. Pitch it as a win-win. Or pitch working from home half the time to cure your blahs and jack up your productivity. Then overproduce at work, but fit all of your work into a part-time schedule, and fill your prime working hours with writing/comedy. Almost any capable human with a not-that-taxing job can pull this off if they put their mind to it. If you’re a manager, investigate other roles or sell your boss on the fact that you’re managing via e-mail most of the time anyway.

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An Internet search produces no clues as to what Fox is up to these days. Five years ago, there was an auction item listed in a brochure for the Galer Street School, a private school in Seattle. It read, “CUSTOM TREE HOUSE: Third-grade parent Bernadette Fox will design a tree house for your child, supply all materials, and build it herself.” I contacted the head of school about this auction item. She emailed back: “According to our records, this auction item received no bids and went unsold.

When you start to find genuine love, the ways you used to manipulate people to get what you thought was love suddenly become clear and obvious. You might expect this to be embarrassing; in fact, it’s often funny, and you find that it’s easy to forgive yourself for your own humanity. You realize that the old ways of seeking approval were just a misunderstanding that has been cleared up now, and you are grateful for that. I sent out an e-mail asking how inquiry had worked for people. The replies kept coming in, five hundred pages of them. As I read, I was moved by how much people had suffered, in so many different ways, and by the delight they took in waking up from the dream of what they thought was happening in their lives and seeing what was really happening. Inquiry seemed like a magic realm that they could come home to after a long, amazing journey, a house where they could sit around the fire, telling tales of danger overcome, and laughing with old friends. When you don’t believe your stressful thoughts, all that’s left are love and laughter.

Life of a software engineer sucks big time during project release. Every single team member contribution is very important. At times, we have to skip breakfast, lunch and even dinner, just to make sure the given ‘TASK’ is completed. Worst thing, that’s the time we get to hear wonderful F* words. It can be on conference calls or on emails, still we have to focus and deliver the end product to a client, without any compromise on quality. Actually, every techie should be saluted. We are the reason for the evolution of Information Technology. We innovate. We love artificial intelligence. We create bots and much more. We take you closer to books. Touch and feel it without the need of carrying a paperback. We created eBook and eBook reader app: it’s basically a code of a software engineer that process the file, keeps up-to-date of your reading history, and gives you a smoother reading experience. We are amazing people. We are more than a saint of those days. Next time, when you meet a software engineer, thank him/her for whatever code he/she developed, tested, designed or whatever he/she did!

Of course, there will be certain times when you have to respond. When it directly relates to a relevant issue, then by all means reply, just do so from a place of logic. Focus on the issue at hand, be methodical in the words you choose, and condense your communication to the bare minimum, when appropriate. Politicians are brilliant at this. If they don’t like a question or don’t want to answer, they don’t. Or if they do, they’ll respond in a way that sidesteps the question. Over the many years of holding post in front of the dais, I’ve heard firsthand presidents and First Ladies asked the most ridiculous or inappropriate things. Do they respond? Nope! At least not in the way the questioner was hoping they would. This is the true essence of not catching the ball. If you ever find yourself struggling to identify whether or not you need to respond, either in person, or via phone, text, or email, ask yourself these questions: Is this a true emergency that requires my immediate attention? Is this a relevant issue that I must respond to? Is this something I can ignore? Is my response going to invite unnecessary drama?

Dear Sadie, I played your “game,” and I honestly don’t know what to say. It is disgusting and offensive, and you are a sick person. I’m cc’ing Dov on this email. I’m not sure if I will be able to attend class, because I’m too disturbed. This class is no longer a safe space for me.—Hannah Sadie smiled when she read this email. She took her time crafting a reply: Dear Hannah, I’m not entirely sorry that you were disturbed by my game. The game is meant to be disturbing, and as I mentioned in class, it was inspired by my grandmother. Hannah replied, Fuck you, Sadie.

Listen, Google,’ I will say, ‘both John and Paul are courting me. I like both of them, but in a different way, and it’s so hard to make up my mind. Given everything you know, what do you advise me to do?’ And Google will answer: ‘Well, I know you from the day you were born. I have read all your emails, recorded all your phone calls, and know your favourite films, your DNA and the entire history of your heart. I have exact data about each date you went on, and if you want, I can show you second-by-second graphs of your heart rate, blood pressure and sugar levels whenever you went on a date with John or Paul. If necessary, I can even provide you with accurate mathematical ranking of every sexual encounter you had with either of them. And naturally enough, I know them as well as I know you. Based on all this information, on my superb algorithms, and on decades’ worth of statistics about millions of relationships – I advise you to go with John, with an 87 per cent probability of being more satisfied with him in the long run. Indeed, I know you so well that I also know you don’t like this answer. Paul is much more handsome than John, and because you give external appearances too much weight, you secretly wanted me to say “Paul”. Looks matter, of course; but not as much as you think. Your biochemical algorithms – which evolved tens of thousands of years ago in the African savannah – give looks a weight of 35 per cent in their overall rating of potential mates. My algorithms – which are based on the most up-to-date studies and statistics – say that looks have only a 14 per cent impact on the long-term success of romantic relationships. So, even though I took Paul’s looks into account, I still tell you that you would be better off with John.

HARV appeared in front of me, arms crossed, head tilted. “You really should read your e-mails from Randy more carefully,” he lectured. “I skim them,” I protested. “Well, if you skimmed them more carefully you would know that prolonged exposure to stealth mode may lead to side effects.” “I can handle . . .” “Impotence.” HARV smiled. “Oh,” I said. “Randy hasn’t really tested it on humans. It’s extra tough to get volunteers for those types of experiments,” HARV said. “Though he has computer simulated it and the results tend to support this conclusion.” “Let’s try to limit our use of stealth mode from now on,” I said.

You want the truth? Whether you’re the senior executive or the sales manager or play both roles, hear me clearly as if I was shouting this while turning red with veins bulging from my neck: When you’re blasted with over 200 emails per day; trapped in meetings that keep you from your primary job; constantly handed (or grabbing for) the fire hose to deal with crises; buried either writing, reading, or scrambling for reports; and have almost zero control of your calendar, you are not leading anyone anywhere. Furthermore, you have exactly the sales culture you deserve—the one you’ve created, whether by design or neglect.

Subject: Some boat Alex, I know Fox Mulder. My mom watched The X-Files. She says it was because she liked the creepy store lines. I think she liked David Duchovny. She tried Californication, but I don't think her heart was in it. I think she was just sticking it to my grandmother, who has decided it's the work of the devil. She says that about most current music,too, but God help anyone who gets between her and American Idol. The fuzzy whale was very nice, it a little hard to identify. The profile of the guy between you and the whale in the third pic was very familiar, if a little fuzzy. I won't ask. No,no. I have to ask. I won't ask. My mother loves his wife's suits. I Googled. There are sharks off the coast of the Vineyard. Great big white ones. I believe you about the turtle. Did I mention that there are sharks there? I go to Surf City for a week every summer with my cousins. I eat too much ice cream. I play miniature golf-badly. I don't complain about sand in my hot dog buns or sheets. I even spend enough time on the beach to get sand in more uncomfortable places. I do not swim. I mean, I could if I wanted to but I figure that if we were meant to share the water with sharks, we would have a few extra rows of teeth, too. I'll save you some cannoli. -Ella Subject: Shh Fiorella, Yes,Fiorella. I looked it up. It means Flower. Which, when paired with MArino, means Flower of the Sea. What shark would dare to touch you? I won't touch the uncomfortable sand mention, hard as it is to resist. I also will not think of you in a bikini (Note to self: Do not think of Ella in a bikini under any circumstanes. Note from self: Are you f-ing kidding me?). Okay. Two pieces of info for you. One: Our host has an excellent wine cellar and my mother is European. Meaning she doesn't begrudge me the occasional glass. Or four. Two: Our hostess says to thank yur mother very much. Most people say nasty things about her suits. Three: We have a house kinda near Surf City. Maybe I'll be there when your there. You'd better burn this after reading. -Alexai Subect: Happy Thanksgiving Alexei, Consider it burned. Don't worry. I'm not showing your e-mails to anybody. Matter of national security, of course. Well,I got to sit at the adult table. In between my great-great-aunt Jo, who is ninety-three and deaf, and her daughter, JoJo, who had to repeat everyone's conversations across me. Loudly. The food was great,even my uncle Ricky's cranberry lasagna. In fact, it would have been a perfectly good TG if the Eagles han't been playing the Jets.My cousin Joey (other side of the family) lives in Hoboken. His sister married a Philly guy. It started out as a lively across-the-table debate: Jets v. Iggles. It ended up with Joey flinging himself across the table at his brother-in-law and my grandmother saying loud prayers to Saint Bridget. At least I think it was Saint Bridget. Hard to tell. She was speaking Italian. She caught me trying to freeze a half-dozen cannoli. She yelled at me. Apparently, the shells get really soggy when they defrost. I guess you'll have to come have a fresh one when you get back. -F/E

Me: It will get better, right? Eventually, it will get better. Scarlett: I’m sorry I’m not the type to lower our discourse to emoji use since you totally deserve a smiley face right now. Yes, it will get better. Me: Ha. It’s just. Whatever. Sorry to keep whining. Scarlett: That’s what I’m here for. BTW, that email you forwarded? My guess: TOTALLY A SECRET ADMIRER. Me: You’ve read too many books. I’m being set up. And stop YELLING AT ME. Scarlett: No way. I didn’t say he was a vampire. I said he was a secret admirer. Most def. Me: Wanna take bets? Scarlett: You should just know by now that I’m always right. It’s my one magic power. Me: What’s mine? Scarlett: TBD. Me: Thanks a lot. Scarlett: Kidding. You are strong. That’s your power, girl. Me: My arms are v. toned from stress-eating ALL the cookies. Hand to mouth. Repeat 323 times. Hard-core workout. Scarlett: Seriously, for a second, J? Just because you’re strong doesn’t mean you shouldn’t ask for help sometimes. Remember that. I’m here, ALWAYS, but you might want to take up that offer from someone local. Me: Whatever. Ugh. Thanks, Dr. Phil. I miss you! Scarlett: Miss you too! Go write back to SN. NOW. NOW. NOW. Now tell me the truth? Anyone at your school unusually pale?

Frankie had used one (reverently) to wipe his eyes.This specimen was old and soft,monogrammed with a J in the corner. "Makes it interesting," he told me once, after finding a box monogrammed with M for fifty cents at a sidewalk sale. "Was it Max or Michael? Maybe Marco..." "Here," he said now. "You have lipstick halfway down to your chin." Humiliated, I scrubbed at my face. Frankie held out his hand, palm up. "Okay,let's have it." I pulled the tube out of my pocket. "Not really my thing, madam, but since I've seen what happens when you don't use a mirror..." I'm sure it helped that he was holding my face, but he read it like a pro. "You had a mirror." "I did.I'm hopeless." "Maybe.Open." He squinted as he filled in my upper lip. "I don't like this." "The color? I knew it was too pink-" "Quiet.You'll smear it.The color is fine. Better for Sienna, I'm sure..." He surveyed his handiwork. "I don't like that you're doing this for him." "Don't start. I told you how nice he was." "In excruciating detail." Given, the post-Bainbridge family dinner e-mail to Frankie and Sadie had been long. But excrutiating stung, especially from the boy who'd used every possible synonym for hot in describing his Friday-night bookstore acquisition. No name, just detailed hotness and the play-by-play of their flirtation over the fantasy section.

Take a time out. It’s not a real vacation if you’re reading email or calling in for messages. When Jai and I went on our honeymoon, we wanted to be left alone. My boss, however, felt I needed to provide a way for people to contact me. So I came up with the perfect phone message: “Hi, this is Randy. I waited until I was thirty-nine to get married, so my wife and I are going away for a month. I hope you don’t have a problem with that, but my boss does. Apparently, I have to be reachable.” I then gave the names of Jai’s parents and the city where they live. “If you call directory assistance, you can get their number. And then, if you can convince my new in-laws that your emergency merits interrupting their only daughter’s honeymoon, they have our number.” We didn’t get any calls.

MINDY READ the Morse code aloud. “ROLLED. FIXING NOW.” “What? That’s it?” Venkat said over the phone. “That’s all he said,” she reported, cradling the phone as she typed out an e-mail to the list of interested parties. “Just three words? Nothing about his physical health? His equipment? His supplies?” “You got me,” she said. “He left a detailed status report. I just decided to lie for no reason.” “Funny,” Venkat said. “Be a smart-ass to a guy seven levels above you at your company. See how that works out.” “Oh no,” Mindy said. “I might lose my job as an interplanetary voyeur? I guess I’d have to use my master’s degree for something else.” “I remember when you were shy.” “I’m space paparazzi now. The attitude comes with the job.” “Yeah, yeah,” Venkat said. “Just send the e-mail.” “Already sent.

Mindy read the Morse code aloud. "ROLLED. FIXING NOW." "What? That's it?" Venkat said over the phone. "That's all he said," she reported, cradling the phone as she typed out an e-mail list of interest parties. "Just three words? Nothing about his physical health? His equipment? His supplies?" "You got me," she said. "He left a detailed status report. I just decided to lie for no reason." "Funny," Venkat said. "Be a smart-ass to a guy seven levels above you at your company. See how that works out." "Oh no," Mindy said. "I might lose my job as an interplanetary voyeur? I guess I'd have to use my master's degree for something else." "I remember when you were shy." "I'm the space paparazzi now. The attitude comes with the job." "Yeah, yeah," Venkat said. "Just send the e-mail." "Already sent.

and museums. Have you had your DNA sequenced? No?! What are you waiting for? Go and do it today. And convince your grandparents, parents and siblings to have their DNA sequenced too – their data is very valuable for you. And have you heard about these wearable biometric devices that measure your blood pressure and heart rate twenty-four hours a day? Good – so buy one of those, put it on and connect it to your smartphone. And while you are shopping, buy a mobile camera and microphone, record everything you do, and put in online. And allow Google and Facebook to read all your emails, monitor all your chats and messages, and keep a record of all your Likes and clicks. If you do all that, then the great algorithms of the Internet-of-All-Things will tell you whom to marry, which career to pursue and whether to start a war.

Until now. You and I are a mis-Match, Ellie, because I hacked into your servers to manipulate our results.” “Rubbish,” Ellie said, secretly balking at the notion. She folded her arms indignantly. “Our servers are more secure than almost every major international company across the world. We receive so many hacking attempts, yet no one gets in. We have the best software and team money can buy to protect us against people like you.” “You’re right about some of that. But what your system didn’t take into account was your own vanity. Do you remember receiving an email some time ago with the subject ‘Businesswoman of the Year Award’? You couldn’t help but open it.” Ellie vaguely remembered reading the email as it had been sent to her private account, which only a few people had knowledge of. “Attached to it was a link you clicked on and that opened to nothing, didn’t it?” Matthew continued. “Well, it wasn’t nothing to me, because your click released a tiny, undetectable piece of tailor-made malware that allowed me to remotely access your network and work my way around your files. Everything you had access to, I had access to. Then I simply replicated my strand of DNA to mirror image yours, sat back and waited for you to get in touch. That’s why I came for a job interview, to learn a little more about the programming and systems you use. Please thank your head of personnel for leaving me alone in the room for a few moments with her laptop while she searched for a working camera to take my head shot. That was a huge help in accessing your network. Oh, and tell her to frisk interviewees for lens deflectors next time—they’re pocket-sized gadgets that render digital cameras useless.

Be brief, but do not make it painfully obvious that you like to keep things short and sweet. Keep your messages in the four to six sentence range. If a woman does not respond to your email immediately, make her wait an equal amount of time by delaying your response to her email. Doing this will make her think that you are not needy. Also, when she notices that you have read her email but not responded to it for a day or two, she will assume that you have many emails to respond to. In general, avoid complimenting women on their looks. That being said, it is okay to give exactly one superficial compliment as long as it is given in a very non-sexual way. For example, a simple, but effective first message to a woman could begin like this - Hi, you look lovely in your photographs. I noticed that …” Keep things light and fun by throwing in a joke

have to give it, especially if that engagement seems emotionally charged. When you decide not to dignify an irrational communication with a response, it’s about preserving your personal dignity and mental clarity. Just because someone throws the ball doesn’t mean you have to catch it. Think of it this way: How would you feel if you sent someone an emotionally charged email but never received a response? You’d initially be confused. First, you’d double-check your Sent folder to make sure it went through. Then you’d start obsessing over the audible “ding” of your incoming messages, thinking it might be their response. Finally, you’d begin wondering if they even got your electronic tirade, somehow found a way to block your emails, or what else they might be doing that was more important than sending you a reply. In the end, you’d feel embarrassed, your pride deflated, and the fire you had to engage in keyboard karate would burn out. That’s the power of not reacting. When faced with a situation in which you’re being provoked, take a moment to let your emotions pass, and then ask yourself, “Do I really need to respond?” Assess the situation from a logical vantage point—rather than an emotional one—and base your decisions on what will ultimately benefit you in the long run. This mental strategy, however, isn’t solely for dealing with insults or slander. It’s just as effective when trying to handle people who constantly want your time and attention. Sometimes you simply don’t have it to give. Or giving it will distract you from things that are more important. When it comes to time allocation, it’s good to separate the signals from the noise. If everything in your life is important, then nothing is.

You want to know who you really are?’ asks Dataism. ‘Then forget about mountains and museums. Have you had your DNA sequenced? No?! What are you waiting for? Go and do it today. And convince your grandparents, parents and siblings to have their DNA sequenced too – their data is very valuable for you. And have you heard about these wearable biometric devices that measure your blood pressure and heart rate twenty-four hours a day? Good – so buy one of those, put it on and connect it to your smartphone. And while you are shopping, buy a mobile camera and microphone, record everything you do, and put in online. And allow Google and Facebook to read all your emails, monitor all your chats and messages, and keep a record of all your Likes and clicks. If you do all that, then the great algorithms of the Internet-of-All-Things will tell you whom to marry, which career to pursue and whether to start a war.

it often occurred to me that there was a time before family radios and television when people had nothing but themselves for entertainment. The point I thought we missed about all that was that in those days – the ‘olden days’, as Ronnie puts it – there was little to take you out of your home. Television did more because there was little left to the imagination. You were captured totally in someone else’s imagination, whether it was the set designs, the settings chosen or the lighting and sound to accompany the actors. Computers wired you to the outside world in a much more complete way. It was something you did alone. Ronnie tried to get me to go into his office to witness what he was seeing, but for the most part he was oblivious to everything and everyone else around him. He was truly gone for those hours he spent reading emails, sending them, copying and pasting in quotes and jokes, and reading the blogs he favored.

Now, describe, in a single written sentence, your intended successful outcome for this problem or situation. In other words, what would need to happen for you to check this project off as “done”? It could be as simple as “Take the Hawaii vacation,” “Handle situation with customer X,” “Resolve college situation with Susan,” “Clarify new divisional management structure,” “Implement new investment strategy,” or “Research options for dealing with Manuel’s reading issue.” All clear? Great. Now write down the very next physical action required to move the situation forward. If you had nothing else to do in your life but get closure on this, what visible action would you take right now? Would you call or text someone? Write an e-mail? Take pen and paper and brainstorm about it? Surf the Web for data? Buy nails at the hardware store? Talk about it face-to-face with your partner, your assistant, your attorney, or your boss? What? Got the answer to that?

But since we’re on the topic of identity and narrative voice - here’s an interesting conundrum. You may know that The Correspondence Artist won a Lambda Award. I love the Lambda Literary Foundation, and I was thrilled to win a Lammy. My book won in the category of “Bisexual Fiction.” The Awards (or nearly all of them) are categorized according to the sexual identity of the dominant character in a work of fiction, not the author. I’m not sure if “dominant” is the word they use, but you get the idea. The foregrounded character. In The Correspondence Artist, the narrator is a woman, but you’re never sure about the gender of her lover. You’re also never sure about the lover’s age or ethnicity - these things change too, and pretty dramatically. Also, sometimes when the narrator corresponds with her lover by email, she (the narrator) makes reference to her “hard on.” That is, part of her erotic play with her lover has to do with destabilizing the ways she refers to her own sex (by which I mean both gender and naughty bits). So really, the narrator and her lover are only verifiably “bisexual” in the Freudian sense of the term - that is, it’s unclear if they have sex with people of the same sex, but they each have a complex gender identity that shifts over time. Looking at the various possible categorizations for that book, I think “Bisexual Fiction” was the most appropriate, but better, of course, would have been “Queer Fiction.” Maybe even trans, though surely that would have raised some hackles. So, I just submitted I’m Trying to Reach You for this year’s Lambda Awards and I had to choose a category. Well. As I said, the narrator identifies as a gay man. I guess you’d say the primary erotic relationship is with his boyfriend, Sven. But he has an obsession with a weird middle-aged white lady dancer on YouTube who happens to be me, and ultimately you come to understand that she is involved in an erotic relationship with a lesbian electric guitarist. And this romance isn’t just a titillating spectacle for a voyeuristic narrator: it turns out to be the founding myth of our national poetics! They are Emily Dickinson and Walt Whitman! Sorry for all the spoilers. I never mind spoilers because I never read for plot. Maybe the editor (hello Emily) will want to head plot-sensitive readers off at the pass if you publish this paragraph. Anyway, the question then is: does authorial self-referentiality matter? Does the national mythos matter? Is this a work of Bisexual or Lesbian Fiction? Is Walt trans? I ended up submitting the book as Gay (Male) Fiction. The administrator of the prizes also thought this was appropriate, since Gray is the narrator. And Gray is not me, but also not not me, just as Emily Dickinson is not me but also not not me, and Walt Whitman is not my lover but also not not my lover. Again, it’s a really queer book, but the point is kind of to trip you up about what you thought you knew about gender anyway.

Here are some practical Dataist guidelines for you: ‘You want to know who you really are?’ asks Dataism. ‘Then forget about mountains and museums. Have you had your DNA sequenced? No?! What are you waiting for? Go and do it today. And convince your grandparents, parents and siblings to have their DNA sequenced too – their data is very valuable for you. And have you heard about these wearable biometric devices that measure your blood pressure and heart rate twenty-four hours a day? Good – so buy one of those, put it on and connect it to your smartphone. And while you are shopping, buy a mobile camera and microphone, record everything you do, and put in online. And allow Google and Facebook to read all your emails, monitor all your chats and messages, and keep a record of all your Likes and clicks. If you do all that, then the great algorithms of the Internet-of-All-Things will tell you whom to marry, which career to pursue and whether to start a war.’ But where do these great algorithms come from? This is the mystery of Dataism. Just as according to Christianity we humans cannot understand God and His plan, so Dataism declares that the human brain cannot fathom the new master algorithms. At present, of course, the algorithms are mostly written by human hackers. Yet the really important algorithms – such as the Google search algorithm – are developed by huge teams. Each member understands just one part of the puzzle, and nobody really understands the algorithm as a whole. Moreover, with the rise of machine learning and artificial neural networks, more and more algorithms evolve independently, improving themselves and learning from their own mistakes. They analyse astronomical amounts of data that no human can possibly encompass, and learn to recognise patterns and adopt strategies that escape the human mind. The seed algorithm may initially be developed by humans, but as it grows it follows its own path, going where no human has gone before – and where no human can follow.

The individual is becoming a tiny chip inside a giant system that nobody really understands. Every day I absorb countless data bits through emails, phone calls and articles; process the data; and transmit back new bits through more emails, phone calls and articles. I don’t really know where I fit into the great scheme of things, and how my bits of data connect with the bits produced by billions of other humans and computers. I don’t have time to find out, because I am too busy answering all the emails. And as I process more data more efficiently – answering more emails, making more phone calls and writing more articles – so the people around me are flooded by even more data. This relentless flow of data sparks new inventions and disruptions that nobody plans, controls or comprehends. No one understands how the global economy functions or where global politics is heading. But no one needs to understand. All you need to do is answer your emails faster – and allow the system to read them. Just as free-market capitalists believe in the invisible hand of the market, so Dataists believe in the invisible hand of the data flow.

A Note from Zibby: Hi! Thanks so much for coming by! I truly, truly hope that the thoughtful content my team and I produce daily helps you make the most of your (very limited!) time. I mean, if we don’t make time for what’s important, life will just pass us by in a blur of emails and to-do lists. And life is way too short for that. So let this programming enhance your life, not take it over. * Learn about a new book and then go read it. * Hear from an amazing author you’ve always loved and then attend their event. * Get some sex tips and actually try them out. * Receive writing advice from a bestselling pro and then write the essay or book you know you have in you. * Rethink weight loss and change what you eat or how you work out that day. * Message with someone you meet in our grief community over your shared loss. * Offer travel tips to someone who can use them. * Find a product you love or a gift that will delight someone. * Read a personal essay and feel deeply understood. * Connect, connect, connect. But we must find time to enjoy life, before our time runs out. So let’s outrun it while we can. Lace up, friends. Here we go. Warmly, Zibby

He could also be terrible romantic and thoughtful. My job was a real challenge. The work was difficult and the boss demanding: he thought nothing of calling or emailing at odd hours, even on the weekend; you ignored him at your peril. There was a point at which everything got to me. And it was exactly at that moment that Chris stepped in and planned a weekend getaway. He found a little cabin out in the woods where there was no cell phone reception-yes!-and without telling anyone, we made our getaway. Almost. I actually called the boss and told him my cell reception was giving out, and so I wouldn’t be able to check messages, something he expected even on the weekends. As soon as we got to the cabin, I headed to the bedroom. Inside, I opened my suitcase and changed into sexy white Victoria’s Secret-style lingerie, complete with corset and thigh-highs. Feeling a little shy and silly, I walked out and leaned against the doorway of the living room where he was sitting. “Hey!” “Yeah?” he mumbled from the couch, not bothering to look up from the magazine he was reading. “Turn around,” I said. He turned around-slowly at first. But as soon as he caught sight of me in that lingerie, he hopped clear over the couch and chased me down the hall to the bedroom. I squealed and giggled the whole way.

read about five monkeys once that were placed in a room with a banana at the top of a set of stairs. As one monkey attempted to climb the stairs, all of the monkeys were sprayed with jets of cold water. A second monkey made an attempt and again the monkeys were sprayed. No more monkeys attempted to climb the stairs. One of the monkeys was then removed from the room and replaced with a new monkey. The new monkey saw the banana and started to climb the stairs but, to its surprise, it was attacked by the other monkeys. Another of the original monkeys was replaced and the newcomer was also attacked when he attempted to climb the stairs. The previous newcomer took part in the punishment with enthusiasm. A third replacement monkey headed for the stairs and was attacked as well. Half of the monkeys that attacked him had no idea why. After replacing the fourth and fifth original monkeys, none had ever been sprayed with cold water but every single one of them stayed the fuck away from the stairs. Being here longer than me doesn't automatically make your adherence to a rule, or the rule itself, right. It makes you the fifth replacement monkey. The one with the weird red arse and the first to point and screech when anyone approaches the stairs. I would be the sixth monkey, at home in bed trying to come up with a viable excuse not to spend another fruitless day locked in a room with five neurotic monkeys.

memoir A Ride in the Neon Sun. Here’s what she says about traveling: Some people travel with firm ideas for a journey, following in the footsteps of an intrepid ancestor whose exotic exploits were happened upon in a dusty, cobweb-laced attic containing immovable trunks full of sepia-curled daguerreotypes and age-discoloured letters redolent of bygone days. Others travel for anthropological, botanical, archaeological, geological, and other logical reasons. Some are smitten by a specific country brewed from childhood dreams. For others, travel is a challenge, a release, an escape, a shaking off of the shackles, and even if they don’t know where they will end up they usually know where they will begin. The very hardest part of writing this book was that I was unable to stop working on it. I kept reading even after the initial manuscript was turned in, discovering new titles and authors whose works I just couldn’t bear to leave out. I even envisioned myself watching the book being printed and shouting periodically, “Stop the presses!” so that I could add yet another section or title. But of course the day actually came when I knew I had to stop or there would never be an end to the project.And here is the result, in your hands right now. So, before your next trip—either virtual or actual—grab a pen and begin making notes about the titles that sound good to you. And enjoy the journeys. I’d love to hear from you. My email address is nancy@nancypearl .com.

Subject Line:  This means a lot… Or Would love to get your opinion…   Email Text:  Dear friends, family, and colleagues:    Thank you so much for reading this email. This isn’t an easy one for me to send, but it is extremely important to me, so I sincerely appreciate you investing your valuable time reading (and hopefully responding to) it. This email is going out to only a select group of people. Each of you knows me well, and I’m hoping will give me honest feedback about my strengths and most importantly, my weaknesses (aka “areas of improvement.”) I’ve never done anything like this before, but I feel that for me grow and improve as a person, I need to get a more accurate picture of how I’m showing up to the people that matter most to me. In order to become the person I need to be to create the life and contribute to others at the levels that I want, I need your feedback. So, all I’m asking is that you take just a few minutes to email me back with what you honestly think are my top 2-3 “areas of improvement.” If it will make you feel better to also list my top 2-3 “strengths” (I’m sure it will make me feel better J), you are definitely welcome to. That’s it. And please don’t sugarcoat it or hold back anything. I will not be offended by anything that you share. In fact, the more “brutally” honest you are, the more leverage it will give me to make positive changes in my life. Thank you again, and if there is anything else I can do to add value to your life, please let me know. With sincere gratitude,   Your Name

On Saturday, March 19, 2016, at 4:34 A.M., John Podesta, the Hillary Clinton campaign chairman, received what looked like an email from Google about his personal Gmail account. “Hi John Someone just used your password to try to sign in to your Google Account,” read the email from “the Gmail Team.” It noted that the attempted intrusion had come from an IP address in Ukraine. The email went on: “Google stopped this sign-in attempt. You should change your password immediately.” The Gmail Team helpfully included a link to a site where Podesta could make the recommended password change. That morning, Podesta forwarded the email to his chief of staff, Sara Latham, who then sent it along to Charles Delavan, a young IT staffer at the Clinton campaign. At 9:54 AM that morning, Delavan replied, “This is a legitimate email. John needs to change his password immediately, and ensure that two-factor authentication is turned on his account… It is absolutely imperative that this is done ASAP.” Delavan later asserted to colleagues that he had committed a typo. He had meant to write that “this is not a legitimate email.” Not everybody on the Clinton campaign would believe him. But Delavan had an argument in his favor. In his response to Latham, he had included the genuine link Podesta needed to use to change his password. Yet for some reason Podesta clicked on the link in the phony email and used a bogus site to create a new password. The Russians now had the keys to his emails and access to the most private messages of Clinton World going back years.

Thank you for picking up a copy of my book. I spent many hours putting this book together, so I hope that you will enjoy reading it. As a Minecraft player, it brings me great joy to be able to share my stories with you. The game is fun and entertaining, and surprisingly, writing about it can be almost just as fun. Once you are done reading this book, if you enjoyed it, please take a moment to leave a review. It will help other people discover this book. If after reading it, you realize that you hate it with such passion, please feel free to leave me a review anyway. I enjoy reading what people think about my books and writing style. I hope that many people will like this book and encourage me to keep writing. Thanks in advance. Special thanks to readers of my previous books. Thank you for taking the time to leave a review. I appreciate it so much; your support means so much to me. I will continue to keep writing and will try to provide the highest quality of unofficial Minecraft books. Thank you for your support. If anyone needs to reach me, you can email me at steve.the.noob.diaries@gmail.com 1/6/2019 10:48 p.m. ​Hey, everyone! I don’t even know how to begin, so I’ll just write whatever that’s on my mind. First of all, I’m really sorry for the super-duper long delay of book 39. I started the outline for it and everything over two months ago and was ready to work on it. But then out of nowhere, I felt burnt out. I didn’t even know what burnt out meant until I told my friends how I was feeling, and they told me that I was burnt out. Basically, it’s a sucky feeling that’s like a combination of writer’s block and depression. At the time, I didn’t want

Well, my epic freedom moment was short-lived, because I realized my cell phone was dead. I walked down the road to a gas station and asked if I could use the phone. I called Tracy and told her where I was and asked her to pick me up. When Tracy arrived I hopped in the car and the very first thing I said to her was “I gotta get home. I have to print out some TV guides and I need to write a letter to some of the guys in there.” She started laughing and when she could compose herself enough to talk said, “My sisters and I all said we guarantee Noah is going to come out of jail with new friends. He’s going to be friends with everybody.” I got home and immediately wrote a letter to Michael Bolton. I put my email address at the bottom. I printed out TV guides. I printed out crossword puzzles. I even printed a couple of pages of jokes and riddles and whatever would be fun to read and do and folded them up and put them in an envelope. All that was left to do was to write the address, put a stamp on the envelope, and put it in the mailbox. I put the envelope in the car in between the seat and the center console to take to the post office. I must have been distracted or had to do something else because the envelope sat there for months. Every so often I would look at it and go, Oh crap, I haven’t sent that yet. And then at some point I spilled something on it so I knew I would never send it now. I threw it out. To this day I’m worried that one day I’m going to be at the gas station in line and hear a voice behind me say, “I’m Michael Bolton and you never sent me my damn TV guide. You’re just like the rest.” He’s going to shank me in my side and that will be the end of the Noah Galloway story.

Important: Be sure to put the outgoing email addresses in the BCC field of the email, so that each recipient doesn’t see everyone else you’re sending it to. (Or, you can copy and paste, then send the email to each person individually.) Subject Line: This means a lot… Or Would love to get your opinion… Email Text: Dear friends, family, and colleagues:  Thank you so much for reading this email. This isn’t an easy one for me to send, but it is extremely important to me, so I sincerely appreciate you investing your valuable time reading (and hopefully responding to) it.  This email is going out to only a select group of people. Each of you knows me well, and I’m hoping will give me honest feedback about my strengths and most importantly, my weaknesses (aka “areas of improvement.”) I’ve never done anything like this before, but I feel that for me grow and improve as a person, I need to get a more accurate picture of how I’m showing up to the people that matter most to me. In order to become the person I need to be to create the life and contribute to others at the levels that I want, I need your feedback.  So, all I’m asking is that you take just a few minutes to email me back with what you honestly think are my top 2-3 “areas of improvement.” If it will make you feel better to also list my top 2-3 “strengths” (I’m sure it will make me feel better ), you are definitely welcome to. That’s it. And please don’t sugarcoat it or hold back anything. I will not be offended by anything that you share. In fact, the more “brutally” honest you are, the more leverage it will give me to make positive changes in my life.  Thank you again, and if there is anything else I can do to add value to your life, please let me know.  With sincere gratitude, Your Name

Listen, Google,’ I will say, ‘both John and Paul are courting me. I like both of them, but in different ways, and it’s so hard to make up my mind. Given everything you know, what do you advise me to do?’ And Google will answer: ‘Well, I’ve known you from the day you were born. I have read all your emails, recorded all your phone calls, and know your favourite films, your DNA and the entire biometric history of your heart. I have exact data about each date you went on and, if you want, I can show you second-by-second graphs of your heart rate, blood pressure and sugar levels whenever you went on a date with John or Paul. If necessary, I can even provide you with an accurate mathematical ranking of every sexual encounter you had with either of them. And naturally, I know them as well as I know you. Based on all this information, on my superb algorithms, and on decades’ worth of statistics about millions of relationships –I advise you to go with John, with an 87 per cent probability that you will be more satisfied with him in the long run. ‘Indeed, I know you so well that I also know you don’t like this answer. Paul is much more handsome than John, and because you give external appearances too much weight, you secretly wanted me to say “Paul”. Looks matter, of course; but not as much as you think. Your biochemical algorithms –which evolved tens of thousands of years ago on the African savannah –give looks a weight of 35 per cent in their overall rating of potential mates. My algorithms –which are based on the most up-to-date studies and statistics –say that looks have only a 14 per cent impact on the long-term success of romantic relationships. So, even though I took Paul’s looks into account, I still tell you that you would be better off with John.

After your email about the Late Bronze Age collapse, I became very intrigued by the idea that writing systems could be ‘lost’. In fact I wasn’t really sure what that even meant, so I had to look it up, and I ended up reading a lot about something called Linear B. Do you know all about this already? Basically, around the year 1900, a team of British excavators in Crete found a cache of ancient clay tablets in a terracotta bathtub. The tablets were inscribed with a syllabic script of unknown language and appeared to date from around 1400 BCE. Throughout the early part of the twentieth century, classical scholars and linguists tried to decipher the markings, known as Linear B, with no success. Although the script was organised like writing, no one could work out what language it transcribed. Most academics hypothesised it was a lost language of the Minoan culture on Crete, with no remaining descendants in the modern world. In 1936, at the age of eighty-five, the archaeologist Arthur Evans gave a lecture in London about the tablets, and in attendance at the lecture was a fourteen-year-old schoolboy named Michael Ventris. Before the Second World War broke out, a new cache of tablets was found and photographed – this time on the Greek mainland. Still, no attempts to translate the script or identify its language were successful. Michael Ventris had grown up in the meantime and trained as an architect, and during the war he was conscripted to serve in the RAF. He hadn’t received any formal qualifications in linguistics or classical languages, but he’d never forgotten Arthur Evans’s lecture that day about Linear B. After the war, Ventris returned to England and started to compare the photographs of the newly discovered tablets from the Greek mainland with the inscriptions on the old Cretan tablets. He noticed that certain symbols on the tablets from Crete were not replicated on any of the samples from Pylos. He guessed that those particular symbols might represent place names on the island. Working from there, he figured out how to decipher the script – revealing that Linear B was in fact an early written form of ancient Greek. Ventris’s work not only demonstrated that Greek was the language of the Mycenaean culture, but also provided evidence of written Greek which predated the earliest-known examples by hundreds of years. After the discovery, Ventris and the classical scholar and linguist John Chadwick wrote a book together on the translation of the script, entitled ‘Documents in Mycenaean Greek’. Weeks before the publication of the book in 1956, Ventris crashed his car into a parked truck and died. He was thirty-four

I have a friend—she is the kind of friend that all of us have—who is a true believer in astrology and psychic phenomenon, a devotee of reiki, a collector of crystals, a woman who occasionally sends me emails with cryptic titles and a single line of text asking, for example, the time of day that I was born or whether I have any mental associations with moths. None that come immediately to mind, I write back. But then of course moths are suddenly everywhere: on watercolor prints in the windows of art shops, in Virginia Woolf’s diaries, on the pages of the illustrated children’s book I read to my nieces. This woman, whom I have known since I was very young, also experiences strange echoes and patterns, but for her they are not the result of confirmation bias or the brain’s inclination toward narrative. She believes that the patterns are part of the very fabric of reality, that they refer to universal archetypes that express themselves in our individual minds. Transcendent truths, she has told me many times, cannot be articulated intellectually because higher thought is limited by the confines of language. These larger messages from the universe speak through our intuitions, and we modern people have become so completely dominated by reason that we have lost this connection to instinct. She claims to receive many of these messages through images and dreams. In a few cases she has predicted major global events simply by heeding some inchoate sensation—an aching knee, the throbbing of an old wound, a general feeling of unease. This woman is a poet, and I tend to grant her theories some measure of poetic license. It seems to me that beneath all the New Agey jargon, she is speaking of the power of the unconscious mind, a realm that is no doubt elusive enough to be considered a mystical force in its own right. I have felt its power most often in my writing, where I’ve learned that intuition can solve problems more efficiently than logical inference. This was especially true when I wrote fiction. I would often put an image in a story purely by instinct, not knowing why it was there, and then the image would turn out to be the perfect metaphor for some conflict that emerged between the characters—again, something that was not planned deliberately—as though my subconscious were making the connections a step or two ahead of my rational mind. But these experiences always took place within the context of language, and I couldn’t understand what it would mean to perceive knowledge outside that context. I’ve said to my friend many times that I believe in the connection between language and reason, that I don’t believe thought is possible without it. But like many faith systems, her beliefs are completely self-contained and defensible by their own logic. Once, when I made this point, she smiled and said, “Of course, you’re an Aquarius.

Try any one of these things each day: A) Sleep eight hours. B) Eat two meals instead of three. C) No TV. D) No junk food. E) No complaining for one whole day. F) No gossip. G) Return an e-mail from five years ago. H) Express thanks to a friend. I) Watch a funny movie or a stand-up comic. J) Write down a list of ideas. The ideas can be about anything. K) Read a spiritual text. Any one that is inspirational to you. The Bible, The Tao te Ching, anything you want. L) Say to yourself when you wake up, “I’m going to save a life today.” Keep an eye out for that life you can save. M) Take up a hobby. Don’t say you don’t have time. Learn the piano. Take chess lessons. Do stand-up comedy. Write a novel. Do something that takes you out of your current rhythm. N) Write down your entire schedule. The schedule you do every day. Cross out one item and don’t do that anymore. O) Surprise someone. P) Think of ten people you are grateful for. Q) Forgive someone. You don’t have to tell them. Just write it down on a piece of paper and burn the paper. It turns out this has the same effect in terms of releasing oxytocin in the brain as actually forgiving them in person. R) Take the stairs instead of the elevator. S) I’m going to steal this next one from the 1970s pop psychology book Don’t Say Yes When You Want to Say No: when you find yourself thinking of that special someone who is causing you grief, think very quietly, “No.” If you think of him and (or?) her again, think loudly, “No!” Again? Whisper, “No!” Again, say it. Louder. Yell it. Louder. And so on. T) Tell someone every day that you love them. U) Don’t have sex with someone you don’t love. V) Shower. Scrub. Clean the toxins off your body. W) Read a chapter in a biography about someone who is an inspiration to you. X) Make plans to spend time with a friend. Y) If you think, “Everything would be better off if I were dead,” then think, “That’s really cool. Now I can do anything I want and I can postpone this thought for a while, maybe even a few months.” Because what does it matter now? The planet might not even be around in a few months. Who knows what could happen with all these solar flares. You know the ones I’m talking about. Z) Deep breathing. When the vagus nerve is inflamed, your breathing becomes shallower. Your breath becomes quick. It’s fight-or-flight time! You are panicking. Stop it! Breathe deep. Let me tell you something: most people think “yoga” is all those exercises where people are standing upside down and doing weird things. In the Yoga Sutras, written in 300 B.C., there are 196 lines divided into four chapters. In all those lines, ONLY THREE OF THEM refer to physical exercise. It basically reads, “Be able to sit up straight.” That’s it. That’s the only reference in the Yoga Sutras to physical exercise. Claudia always tells me that yogis measure their lives in breaths, not years. Deep breathing is what keeps those breaths going.

22. Giving up Distraction Week #4 Saturday Scripture Verses •Hebrews 12:1–2 •Mark 1:35 •John 1:14–18 Questions to Consider •What distracts you from being present with other people around you? •What distracts you from living out God’s agenda for your life? •What helps you to focus and be the most productive? •How does Jesus help us focus on what is most important in any given moment? Plan of Action •At your next lunch, have everyone set their phone facing down at the middle of the table. The first person who picks up their phone pays for the meal. •Challenge yourself that the first thing you watch, read, or listen to in the morning when you wake up is God’s Word (not email or Facebook). •Do a digital detox. Turn off everything with a screen for 24 hours. Tomorrow would be a great day to do it, since there is no “40 Things Devotion” on Sunday. Reflection We live in an ever connected world. With smart phones at the tip of our fingers, we can instantly communicate with people on the other side of the world. It is an amazing time to live in. I love the possibilities and the opportunities. With the rise of social media, we not only connect with our current circle of friends and family, but we are also able to connect with circles from the past. We can build new communities in the virtual world to find like-minded people we cannot find in our physical world. Services like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and Instagram all have tremendous power. They have a way of connecting us with others to shine the light of Jesus. While all of these wonderful things open up incredible possibilities, there are also many dangers that lurk. One of the biggest dangers is distraction. They keep us from living in the moment and they keep us from enjoying the people sitting right across the room from us. We’ve all seen that picture where the family is texting one another from across the table. They are not looking at each other. They are looking at the tablet or the phone in front of them. They are distracted in the moment. Today we are giving up distraction and we are going to live in the moment. Distraction doesn’t just come from modern technology. We are distracted by our work. We are distracted by hobbies. We are distracted by entertainment. We are distracted by busyness. The opposite of distraction is focus. It is setting our hearts and our minds on Jesus. It’s not just putting him first. It’s about him being a part of everything. It is about making our choices to be God’s choices. It is about letting him determine how we use our time and focus our attention. He is the one setting our agenda. I saw a statistic that 80% of smartphone users will check their phone within the first 15 minutes of waking up. Many of those are checking their phones before they even get out of bed. What are they checking? Social media? Email? The news of the day? Think about that for a moment. My personal challenge is the first thing I open up every day is God’s word. I might open up the Bible on my phone, but I want to make sure the first thing I am looking at is God’s agenda. When I open up my email, my mind is quickly set to the tasks those emails generate rather than the tasks God would put before me. Who do I want to set my agenda? For me personally, I know that if God is going to set the agenda, I need to hear from him before I hear from anyone else. There is a myth called multitasking. We talk about doing it, but it is something impossible to do. We are very good at switching back and forth from different tasks very quickly, but we are never truly doing two things at once. So the challenge is to be present where God has planted you. In any given moment, know what is the one most important thing. Be present in that one thing. Be present here and now.

Reader's Digest (Reader's Digest USA) - Clip This Article on Location 56 | Added on Friday, May 16, 2014 12:06:55 AM Words of Lasting Interest Looking Out for The Lonely One teacher’s strategy to stop violence at its root BY GLENNON DOYLE MELTON  FROM MOMASTERY.COM PHOTOGRAPH BY DAN WINTERS A few weeks ago, I went into my son Chase’s class for tutoring. I’d e-mailed Chase’s teacher one evening and said, “Chase keeps telling me that this stuff you’re sending home is math—but I’m not sure I believe him. Help, please.” She e-mailed right back and said, “No problem! I can tutor Chase after school anytime.” And I said, “No, not him. Me. He gets it. Help me.” And that’s how I ended up standing at a chalkboard in an empty fifth-grade classroom while Chase’s teacher sat behind me, using a soothing voice to try to help me understand the “new way we teach long division.” Luckily for me, I didn’t have to unlearn much because I’d never really understood the “old way we taught long division.” It took me a solid hour to complete one problem, but I could tell that Chase’s teacher liked me anyway. She used to work with NASA, so obviously we have a whole lot in common. Afterward, we sat for a few minutes and talked about teaching children and what a sacred trust and responsibility it is. We agreed that subjects like math and reading are not the most important things that are learned in a classroom. We talked about shaping little hearts to become contributors to a larger community—and we discussed our mutual dream that those communities might be made up of individuals who are kind and brave above all. And then she told me this. Every Friday afternoon, she asks her students to take out a piece of paper and write down the names of four children with whom they’d like to sit the following week. The children know that these requests may or may not be honored. She also asks the students to nominate one student who they believe has been an exceptional classroom citizen that week. All ballots are privately submitted to her. And every single Friday afternoon, after the students go home, she takes out those slips of paper, places them in front of her, and studies them. She looks for patterns. Who is not getting requested by anyone else? Who can’t think of anyone to request? Who never gets noticed enough to be nominated? Who had a million friends last week and none this week? You see, Chase’s teacher is not looking for a new seating chart or “exceptional citizens.” Chase’s teacher is looking for lonely children. She’s looking for children who are struggling to connect with other children. She’s identifying the little ones who are falling through the cracks of the class’s social life. She is discovering whose gifts are going unnoticed by their peers. And she’s pinning down—right away—who’s being bullied and who is doing the bullying. As a teacher, parent, and lover of all children, I think this is the most brilliant Love Ninja strategy I have ever encountered. It’s like taking an X-ray of a classroom to see beneath the surface of things and into the hearts of students. It is like mining for gold—the gold being those children who need a little help, who need adults to step in and teach them how to make friends, how to ask others to play, how to join a group, or how to share their gifts. And it’s a bully deterrent because every teacher knows that bullying usually happens outside her eyeshot and that often kids being bullied are too intimidated to share. But, as she said, the truth comes out on those safe, private, little sheets of paper. As Chase’s teacher explained this simple, ingenious idea, I stared at her with my mouth hanging open. “How long have you been using this system?” I said. Ever since Columbine, she said. Every single Friday afternoon since Columbine. Good Lord. This brilliant woman watched Columbine knowing that all violence begins with disconnection. All

But this sense of duty and virtue involved a complicated calculation about your positive effect on the White House versus its negative effect on you. In April, an email originally copied to more than a dozen people went into far wider circulation when it was forwarded and reforwarded. Purporting to represent the views of Gary Cohn and quite succinctly summarizing the appalled sense in much of the White House, the email read: It’s worse than you can imagine. An idiot surrounded by clowns. Trump won’t read anything—not one-page memos, not the brief policy papers; nothing. He gets up halfway through meetings with world leaders because he is bored. And his staff is no better. Kushner is an entitled baby who knows nothing. Bannon is an arrogant prick who thinks he’s smarter than he is. Trump is less a person than a collection of terrible traits. No one will survive the first year but his family. I hate the work, but feel I need to stay because I’m the only person there with a clue what he’s doing. The reason so few jobs have been filled is that they only accept people who pass ridiculous purity tests, even for midlevel policy-making jobs where the people will never see the light of day. I am in a constant state of shock and horror.

Summary The key to getting subscribers to open and read your email lies in five main factors: Making sure your emails get through spam and greymail filters by keeping them on topic and high value. Quickly establishing a reputation for sending valuable, entertaining emails that your subscribers want to read so that opening your emails becomes a habit. Using subject lines which promise benefits and invoke curiosity and following that up in the first few lines of the email. Making sure your emails look easy to read across all devices. Sending your emails when your subscribers are likely to have less in their inbox.

When you are microblogging, your posts are addressed to the community, so you never know up front who will read them. With emails, the sender determines who reads their message, whereas in Enterprise Social Networks the reader (community member) determines whether to read it.

already laid out to get responses from “warm” e-mails. • Live and die by your Subject line. If you don’t, your e-mail may never get read. Focus on your strongest hook, either the contact you have in common or the specific value you have to offer. Make them curious. • Game the timing. There’s a lot of debate about the best time to e-mail, but I personally like to fire away when I think the person is apt to be spending time on e-mailing. Their morning, lunchtime, and the last hours of the workday are typical. • Be brief. Once you’ve written a draft, the “best” version of it is usually 50 percent shorter. Yes, we’re half as interesting as we think! Your e-mail should fit into a single screen. If I have to scroll to get to the point, I’ve already lost interest. • Have a clear call to action. What do you want them to do? Make your first request clear and easy. Request fifteen minutes on the phone, not just a vague phone call. Offer suggested dates and times, not just “a meeting sometime.” Short-circuit the process as much as you can, and don’t make them guess what you’re looking for. • Read it out loud. I had an assistant who would do this with every e-mail she wrote, and it always made me laugh when I caught her in the act. But she was smart. Listening to herself, she ensured that the language was clear and conversational, and she timed it, too, with a forty-five-second limit. • Spell-check. There’s no excuse for poor spelling and grammar in an e-mail. I’ve written two books and have a URL with my name in it, and I still get people e-mailing “Keith Ferazzi” with one “r.” I know you’ll do better.

Assign a file or paper tray to collect single-side printed paper for reuse. Boycott paper sourced from virgin forests and reams sold in plastic. Cancel magazine and newspaper subscriptions; view them online instead. Digitize important receipts and documents for safekeeping. Digital files are valid proofs for tax purposes. Download CutePDF Writer to save online files without having to print them. Email invitations or greeting cards instead of printing them (see “Holidays and Gifts” chapter). Forage the recycling can when paper scraps are needed, such as for bookmarks or pictures (for school collages, for example). Give extra paper to the local preschool. Hack the page margins of documents to maximize printing. Imagine a paperless world. Join the growing paperless community. Kill the fax machine; encourage electronic faxing through a service such as HelloFax. Limit yourself to print only on paper that has already been printed on one side. Make online billing and banking a common practice. Nag the kids’ teachers to send home only important papers. Opt out of paper newsletters. Print on both sides when using a new sheet of paper (duplex printing). Question the need for printing; print only when absolutely necessary. In most cases, it is not. Repurpose junk mail envelopes—make sure to cross out any barcode. Sign electronically using the Adobe Acrobat signing feature or SignNow.com. Turn down business cards; enter relevant info directly into a smartphone. Use shredded paper as a packing material, single-printed paper fastened with a metal clip for a quick notepad (grocery lists, errands lists), and double-printed paper to wrap presents or pick up your dog’s feces. Visit the local library to read business magazines and books. Write on paper using a pencil, which you can then erase to reuse paper, or better yet, use your computer, cell phone, or erasable board instead of paper. XYZ: eXamine Your Zipper; i.e., your leaks: attack any incoming source of paper.

Hey,” I say back. “How’s yours?” she asks. “Crying. How’s yours?” “Oh boy.” She pulls a face. “She got this email from him. Saying he loves her and that she’s the only one.” I scowl. “The only one? After his wife and that girl from two years ago?” “I know, right? The only one right now. Or when he was writing the email. Pig.” Paige is scowling too. “So she’s all psyched up again. I swear, it’s pathetic.” “His wife’s pregnant,” I say hopelessly, because it seems to me such a huge deal--another baby coming!--that it should stop dead any debate Kendra’s having with herself about whether she should believe Luigi. “I know! But she’s reading the email over and over again and playing Adele and Amy Winehouse,” Paige reveals. “Adele and Amy Winehouse? Oh no. We’d better keep an eye on her,” I say grimly.

RULES TO TEACH YOUR SON 1. Never shake a man’s hand sitting down. 2. Don’t enter a pool by the stairs. 3. The man at the BBQ Grill is the closest thing to a king. 4. In a negotiation, never make the first offer. 5. Request the late check-out. 6. When entrusted with a secret, keep it. 7. Hold your heroes to a higher standard. 8. Return a borrowed car with a full tank of gas. 9. Play with passion or don’t play at all… 10. When shaking hands, grip firmly and look them in the eye. 11. Don’t let a wishbone grow where a backbone should be. 12. If you need music on the beach, you’re missing the point. 13. Carry two handkerchiefs. The one in your back pocket is for you. The one in your breast pocket is for her. 14. You marry the girl, you marry her family. 15. Be like a duck. Remain calm on the surface and paddle like crazy underneath. 16. Experience the serenity of traveling alone. 17. Never be afraid to ask out the best looking girl in the room. 18. Never turn down a breath mint. 19. A sport coat is worth 1000 words. 20. Try writing your own eulogy. Never stop revising. 21. Thank a veteran. Then make it up to him. 22. Eat lunch with the new kid. 23. After writing an angry email, read it carefully. Then delete it. 24. Ask your mom to play. She won’t let you win. 25. Manners maketh the man. 26. Give credit. Take the blame. 27. Stand up to Bullies. Protect those bullied. 28. Write down your dreams. 29. Take time to snuggle your pets, they love you so much and are always happy to see you. 30. Be confident and humble at the same time. 31. If ever in doubt, remember whose son you are and REFUSE to just be ordinary! 32. In all things, give glory to God.

Love MINECRAFT? **Over 18,000 words of kid-friendly fun!** This high-quality fan fiction fantasy diary book is for kids, teens, and nerdy grown-ups who love to read epic stories about their favorite game! Meet the Skull Kids. They're three Minecraft players who hop from world to world, hunting zombies and searching for the elusive Herobrine--the ghost in the machine. Teleporting down into a new world, the group is surprised to find that the game has changed once again, rendering almost ALL of their technology and mods useless. And when two of the Skull Kids are starving and distracted by exploring a desert village on Day 1 of their new adventure, the whole group is in danger when the sun goes down. Will the Skull Kids survive? Thank you to all of you who are buying and reading my books and helping me grow as a writer. I put many hours into writing and preparing this for you. I love Minecraft, and writing about it is almost as much fun as playing it. It’s because of you, reader, that I’m able to keep writing these books for you and others to enjoy. This book is dedicated to you. Enjoy!! After you read this book, please take a minute to leave a simple review. I really appreciate the feedback from my readers, and love to read your reactions to my stories, good or bad. If you ever want to see your name/handle featured in one of my stories, leave a review and tell me about it in there! And if you ever want to ask me any questions, or tell me your idea for a cool Minecraft story, you can email me at steve@skeletonsteve.com. Are you on my Amazing Reader List? Find out at the end of the book! June 29th, 2016 Now I’m going to try something a little different. Tell me what you guys think! This ‘Players Series’ is going to be a continuing series of books following my new characters, the players Renzor51, Molly, and quantum_steve. Make sure to let me know if you like it or not! Would you still like to see more books about mobs? More books about Cth’ka the Creeper King? I’m planning on continuing that one. ;) Don’t forget to review, and please say hi and tell me your ideas! Thanks, Ryan Gallagher, for the ideas to continue the wolf pack book! Enjoy the story. P.S. - Have you joined the Skeleton Steve Club and my Mailing List?? You found one of my diaries!! This particular book is the continuing story of some Minecraft players—a trio of friends who leap from world to world, searching for the elusive Herobrine. They’re zombie hunters and planeswalkers. They call themselves “The Skull Kids”. Every time these Skull Kids hop into a new world, they start with nothing more than the clothes they’re wearing, and they end up dominating the realm where they decide to live. What you are about to read is the first collection of diary entries from Renzor51, the player and member of the Skull Kids who documents their adventures, from the day they landed on Diamodia and carved out their own little empire, and beyond. Be warned—this is an epic book! You’re going to care about these characters. You’ll be scared for them, feel good for them, and feel bad for them! It’s my hope that you’ll be sucked up into the story, and the adventure and danger will be so intense, you’ll forget we started this journey with a video game! With that, future readers, I present to you the tale of the Skull Kids, Book 1. The Skull Kids Ka-tet Renzor51 Renzor51 is the warrior-scribe of the group, and always documents the party’s adventures and excursions into game worlds. He’s a sneaky fighter, and often takes the role of a sniper, but can go head to head with the Skull Kids’ enemies when needed. A natural artist, Renzor51 tends to design and build many of the group’s fortresses and structures, and keeps things organized. He also focuses a lot on weapon-smithing and enchanting, always seeking out ways to improve his gear. Molly

HOW TO BECOME ILLUMINATI 1* You must be able to keep the secret to your self 2* You must have strong belief of Success 3* You must be over the age of 18 to make your own decision 4* You must be able to pay a joining fee of $200 USD 5* You must be able to wear a black shirt/t-shirt/vest not less than 3 times a week 6* You must believe that money is power 7* You must be aware that your name must sound in the list of celebrities and super-rich people 8* All men and women are welcome to join this Temple of only Success, Respect and Super-Rich 9* You must be ready to visit the sea water at midnight 10* You must have a belief in the changing/modern world of doing Things. 11* You must be ready to read, respect and understand the Prayer of the Illuminati 12* You have be able to make a Sacrifice. If you’re ready to join the Illuminati society you must have read and understood the above qualifications and ready to undergo each of them carefully then you can contact either through email or telephonically. Email:priestjose@hotmail.com Call:+27719147845

...I conducted a number of experiments to get in touch with my future self. Here are my favorite three: • Fire up AgingBooth. While hiring a programmer to create a 3-D virtual reality simulator is probably out of your price range, I personally love an app called AgingBooth, which transforms a picture of your face into what you will look like in several decades. There are also other apps like it, like Merrill Edge’s web app that shows you a live avatar of what you’ll look like at retirement (faceretirement.merilledge.com). AgingBooth is my favorite of them all, and it’s available for both Android and iOS, and it’s free. On the website for this book (productivityprojectbook.com), you can see what to expect out of the app—I’ve framed a picture of myself that hangs above my computer in my office, where I see it every day. Visitors are usually freaked out. • Send a letter to your future self. Like the letter I wrote at camp, writing and sending a letter to yourself in the future is a great way to bridge the gap between you and your future self. I frequently use FutureMe.org to send emails to myself in the future, particularly when I see myself being unfair to future me. • Create a future memory. I’m not a fan of hocus-pocus visualizations, so I hope this doesn’t sound like one. In her brilliant book The Wallpaper Instinct, Kelly McGonigal recommends creating a memory of yourself in the future—like one where you don’t put off a report you’re procrastinating on, or one where you read ten interesting books because you staved off the temptation of binge-watching three seasons of House of Cards on Netflix. Simply imagining a better, more productive version of yourself down the line has been shown to be enough to motivate you to act in ways that are helpful for your future self.

Cheat Sheet   Capture – System for capturing new inputs   • Desk • Phone • Email     Action steps   1. Set up Capture system   • Designate note-taking process on phone • Create “In-basket” for desk • Clean out email inbox        –Unsubscribe from unnecessary emails        –Create filters for verification messages   2. Set up system for scanning receipts   • Create Evernote Account • Download Scannable • Read tutorial on scanning receipts with Scannable   Filter – Process for simplified decision-making   • Do it • Delegate it • Defer it • Dump it     Action steps   1. Set up a Tickler File   • Purchase and label 43 folders and file holder or • Read tutorial on creating Tickler file in Evernote   2. Set up “Next Actions” list   • Download preferred to-do app (Eg. Wunderlist) • Add necessary lists   3. Set up other useful lists in Evernote   • Download templates for useful lists   4. Opt out of junk mail   Organize – Maintaining your system   • Weekly Review     Action steps   1.    Schedule a time each week for a “Weekly Review” 2. Download “Weekly Planner”       Click here for a printable version of this cheat sheet summary.   Thank You Before you go, I’d like to say “thank you” for purchasing my book. You

But how do you come ‘offline’ when so much of our daily lives is moving ‘online’? Every month new sites and online services are launched. If you need to check anything – about a new school for your children, medical treatment, tourist destination or recipe – you go online. Bill Gates put it so well when he called the Internet the ‘town square for the global village of tomorrow’. Could you spend a week or even a day without reading your emails, using social media or going online? Someone recently joked with me that having Internet access is more important than having food or water.

When I got home, it was late at night. I walked into my room and it was painfully empty. And then I saw it. On the bed were the engagement ring and a letter. I couldn’t read the letter. I still have it but have never read it. I was too sad and ashamed about hurting her. Because I’d proposed to her on national television and now had some celebrity status, my management team said that we needed to make a statement. It could be in our own words, but Jamie and I had to make a statement announcing our breakup. We wrote it together over email and then we chose a date and time to post it. We texted each other right before we had decided we would post it, and then we each hit ENTER on our keyboards. There’s nothing more final than an official statement declaring to the world that your relationship is over. It was the hardest breakup I’ve ever had. And that is not a dig at Brandi or Tracy. I just think I was older, more mature, and more capable or forming a deeper connection with Jamie. And I did. I had a deeper connection to her than to anyone else I’ve ever known. As painful as it was to walk away from her, I know it was for the best for her and for me. And I will forever be thankful for the time I had with her. She made me a better person.

PUBLISH YOUR BOOK TODAY The following is a direct quote from Amazon, and, if you are a real writer, it is one of the most fun things you will ever see in your life: This royalty payment notification is for Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) sales recorded in the Kindle Store. Payment will be made to your bank account and should appear in your available balance within 2 to 5 business days after the Payment Date. Details of the payment will be available on the Payment Report after it has been processed by your bank. The email that the above is quoted from comes for you every month, along with notes about payments from the various Kindle Stores in which you are selling, and they make you feel terrific. What a knockout: there is my money, flowing in as receivables each and every month, like clockwork, from all around the globe and waiting for me in my personal bank account, sitting there to use as I see fit. The statements show up in your every month, along with those from all your stores. They are a bit longer than the above quote, but sit back, close your eyes and visualize how wonderful it will be to have money rolling into your bank electronically, eliminating the bother of dithering around with checks. Right now, as your read this, the opportunity to earn a solid living, even to make a fortune with your books is real world and readily available for you. The revenue stream is just sitting there; it’s waiting for you to get busy, to write books and to learn to use Amazon as an amazing marketing tool poised and ready for your decision to pursue your dream. The trick for getting hot at book marketing—so you can actually be in a place for fully enjoying your life as an author/publisher—is to believe in yourself: to move right on past all your previous confusion: discouraging feedback from peers, friends and family; all self-doubt and blaming games; rejection slips from agents, publishers and magazines; and yes, even the ego trip of your treasured writer’s block . . . .

Every couple of months or so, some boundary breaking article comes out in a nationally published magazine. The article makes a big thesis statement about relationships. Like say how, women don’t need men anymore, or how if you’re a woman over thirty-five, you should just settle with whatever guy is half-way nice to you, or how monogamy is not feasible, or plausible, or enjoyable, for any human. And we should all be swingers, or a study is released that say’s, you don’t have to love your kids anymore or something. They’re the kind of articles that are e-mailed everywhere and I get them forwarded to me about eight times. I will read one of these articles and immediately afterward I’m so swept up in it, I can’t help but think Yes, Yes, that is one-hundred percent right. Finally! Someone has confirmed that little voice in the back of my mind that has always not loved my kids, or I’m so happy I’m that much closer to my swinging lifestyle I’ve always secretly been craving. I’m normal and now it’s a national discussion and others agree and I can feel normal now. But then, a week later I’m thinking, I hate this. I feel awful. This wretched little magazine article has helped convinced more open minded liberal arts graduates that, the nuclear family doesn’t exist without some hideous twist, like the dad is allowed to go to an S & M dungeon once a week or something. It makes me cry because it means that fewer and fewer people are believing it’s cool to want what I want, which is to be married and have kids and love each other in a monogamous, long-lasting relationship.

Did you know that you can integrate your telecommunications and office network together so you get an email that reads a voicemail message to you? -

There’s nothing else inside the envelope. I turn the photo over and we read the note on the back written in small, careful handwriting. I miss you, Pipperoni. -Darren I swallow the lump in my throat and look up at Morgan. We both have tears in our eyes. “Why are you crying?” I ask, laughing. “Because this is the single most romantic thing I’ve ever heard!” she says, swiping at the corner of her eye. “How did he get your address? I thought you never exchanged info.” “We didn’t.” I sit down on my bed and invent scenarios. “Maybe Chiara really did see him. Maybe she didn’t want me to know, so this could be a surprise?” “Oh, I would die to have something this epic happen to me,” Morgan squeals. She falls onto the bed with the back of her hand against her forehead as if she’s fainted. I log into my e-mail and compose a letter to Chiara, telling her to call me right away. Then I stare at Darren’s note some more, especially the “I miss you” part. And the “Darren” part. Which is basically the whole thing. Darren misses me.

Check e-mail twice per day, once at 12:00 noon or just prior to lunch, and again at 4:00 P.M. 12:00 P.M. and 4:00 P.M. are times that ensure you will have the most responses from previously sent e-mail. Never check e-mail first thing in the morning.12 Instead, complete your most important task before 11:00 A.M. to avoid using lunch or reading e-mail as a postponement excuse